I’ve lived in the US since the mid 90’s and am now a proud card carrying member of the Union. During my time here there are three questions I am asked most:
Q: Are you Australian?
A: No, I’m from England. I sound like the Geico gecko not Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee
Q: You were a cop! But those guys don’t have guns!! How did you do your job?
A: I told the bad guys “I will get REALLY angry if you don’t do as I ask”. If that didn’t work I’m a really good runner 
Q: What are the differences between the US and the UK?
I love both the US and the UK, they each have pros and cons, but my answer to the third question has changed over the years. I think it’s current iteration is the most accurate:
“In the US you can fail nine times and succeed once and you’ll be remembered for your success. In the UK you can succeed nine times and fail once and you’ll be remembered for the failure.”
I love the positivity of the collective US mentality but that seems to go away when the subject of Facebook comes up. Even with all that positivity I still regularly meet Americans who tell me Facebook is a fad, that “I can’t be bothered with all that”, “I don’t have the time” and a long list of other negative observations synonymous with the Web nay sayers from the first couple of years of my time in America.
I have made no secret about my thoughts on Facebook and it’s ultimate place in the online world but let me be a little more blunt:
Need proof? Take a couple of seconds and look at the Facebook Website, especially the bottom left hand corner:
Notice anything familiar? How about now:
And when you click on your Facebook ‘Start’, oops, I meant ‘Applications’ button up pops a list of programs (I hope you are beginning to see where I’m going with this).
With Facebook also offering email (Microsoft Outlook), instant messenger (Windows Live Messenger) and Websites (via Facebook Pages and Groups, two services I expect to merge at some point in the future) all it needs is Web based versions of a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel), word processor (Microsoft Word) and a presentation application (Microsoft PowerPoint) and is in a position to supplant Billy and his boys. Google already has all of these programs working online via their amazing Google Docs service so this is going to happen (note: I’ve just given you a way to make yourself a millionaire; develop a Facebook app that provides either Excel, Word or PowerPoint functionality, ideally all three).
Time spent on Facebook is tracked in hours, not minutes like every other Website and that’s because Facebook isn’t a Website, it’s a lifestyle:
Source: Silicon Alley Insider
The average time spent on Facebook will continue to rise if Zukerbabe has his way. Facebook want you to email and IM and play and purchase all within the framework of Facebook.com. Every major brand is trying to work out how to leverage this new medium and few have succeeded. Once real business applications see some success we will finally see the oft referenced ‘web within the web‘.
I’ve said before that I expect MySpace to go away and I’m going to stick my neck out again; so will twitter if it doesn’t move quickly to change it’s business model:
Source: Silicon Alley Insider
Facebook has already taken steps to replicate twitter functionality and recently released internal twitter documents detailed their fear of losing out to Facebook. So can anyone stop this social monster? The fight for world domination is between two heavyweights: Facebook (with Microsoft as the bucket boy; “cut me Gatesy, cut me!“) and Google.
May the best man (sorry, the boxing analogy can’t be ‘PC’) win! And may the Nay Sayers in the land of the free, home of the brave finally get it, or I’ll think I’m back in the 51st State!
